The Orange VW

August 1972

I had off 10 days in August to go home to Milwaukee, travel to the family cottage in Minaqua, WI and buy a new car. I had enough of hitchhiking and was getting a new car - a brand new orange VW bug for $1,895.

I've already mentioned that my family is a bunch of artists, well I am good with drawing letters, so I painted my own racing stripe on the driver side that said, "Jesus Is Lord." It was flawless. It was cool.

After awhile I bagan putting stickers on it, first the bumpers and eventually other places as well. A year I had an accident with it. I was in Miami, FL, it was rush hour traffic, I had bald tires, it had just started raining, and the pavement changed to a real smooth surface. I fish-tailed going 65 mph and then the car spun out of control moving through all 3 lanes, hitting the guard rail and then sliding through all three lanes again settling at the edge of the road.

I was shaking, but somehow I avoided every car and a tractor-trailer who nearly missed me as I slid back and forth on the freeway and the car did pretty well having only a damaged fender. The police man at the scene saw my stickers plastered on the car, saw one that said "Honk if you love Jesus," and asked me if I honked.

Within weeks of getting the car, Ray put brackets under the dash for me to keep my bible and it had no air conditioning - months later I drove through the desert with
the windows rolled up because the outside air was hotter than the inside baking going on.

In 1975 with almost 70,000 miles the orange VW was totalled and I spent a month in the hospital after being unconscious for 24 hours. But that's another story.